Local stargazers enjoy lunar eclipse

Friday, May 16, 2003 | 9:51 a.m.

Moon gazers ranging from a physics researcher to a Girl Scout watched in awe as a total lunar eclipse unfolded in the southeast night sky Thursday over an hour's time.

"I was eating my dinner and I heard about it on television," said Eunja Kim, a physics researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as she watched the Earth's shadow cover the bright white full moon about 8:15 p.m.

Kim said she has been fascinated with the moon, the stars and the planets since she was 10 years old in Korea. She earned a Ph.D. in material physics and arrived in Las Vegas with her own telescope in 1996.

"My sister and her friends say I analyze everything and spoil the beauty of nature," Kim said. "Actually, I understand and analyze why things happen, but nature makes me feel humble. This is beautiful."

Dan Koury, a UNLV student pursuing a doctorate in material physics by studying how steel corrodes, agreed with Kim.

Finishing an assignment in math physics, Koury watched as the moon's hue turned reddish.

Koury said he remembered summer nights in Holbrook, Ariz., where he grew up and watched the stars.

"That's something," Koury said from the top of the Bigelow Physics Building at UNLV before he headed inside to finish his assignment. "Well, back to the grind."

Among astronomy buffs gazing at the spectacle from the university's north parking lot, gasps of delight could be heard from a few people who used telescopes to try to glimpse every nuance of the eclipse.

For Katie Carroll, 11, a Girl Scout and an aspiring astronomer and writer, the chance to watch the lunar eclipse was a family affair.

Katie and her father, Kyle Carroll, each peered through their own telescopes.

So how did the father get his daughter interested in the night sky?

"She got us interested in it," Kyle Carroll said with a grin. In fact, they became so interested in stargazing that the family now has a telescope at home that a professional astronomer would covet, he said. "It has its own trailer."

It's been a busy month for the Astronomical Society of Nevada, Las Vegas, the second such club in town, club president J.C. Willette said. The other club hangs around at the Community College of Southern Nevada Planetarium.

Celebrating Astronomy Day on May 10, Willette said the club viewed sunspots and solar flares from the parking lot of the Galleria at Sunset mall in Henderson.

"And we're having a star party on May 31," Willette said. Party-goers will gather at Nelson's Landing, about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas, for an in-depth look at the summer stars, he said.

For more information, go to the society's website, www.asnlv.org.